Saas Fee Finals

It’s Worldcup season. For a while already but I didn’t have the money to join the comps yet. 

But there was no excuse not to go the the biggest and most difficult comp of the year: Saas Fee, Swiss. 

Dennis, my boyfriend won the speed discipline last year so he had to defend his title. 

I’m more interested in the new outdoor mixed spot at my new home in Germany then the worldcup comps, but I had to support Dennis, thus had to go. 

No expectations but I knew I was rather strong, despite of the lack on training in December and January. Unlucky Dennis saw more hospitals then climbing-gyms in those two months (long story) and I had to support him there. So not much climbing for me either in the last months...

I tried to make up by running and cycling a lot in between work, hospitals and Christmas dinners and even managed to loose weight instead of gain weight. 

I also found a new tool to see how my fitness level was doing; the heart-rate belt and watch. 

Trying to understand my body I was more conscious about my nutrition, rest and my new game: heart-rate monitoring. 

With all this new information we drove to Saas Fee. 

Thursday evening I drew number 9. My starting number for the comp. 

Nervous as always (last year I was so nervous I threw up twice when waiting for my turn in the isolation zone) I was waiting for my turn. 
I was fifth to climb, so not much time to gain nervousness. Good. 

My newly bought Grivel iceaxes felt still awkward but they worked well the last weekend so I decided to try them for the comp. 

Meanwhile, waiting, listening to Rudimental to give me some relaxation and energy at the same time I watched my heart rate. Boing, boing, boing. I didn’t even had to look at my watch, the trembling hands and the active ‘boing, boing, boing’ in my dry throat said enough. 118, 121, 120, 117, 122, 123... Ah, that why I don’t have cold hands...

For some reason it felt good to know it was not just my mind but my body too reacting on the nervousness in my head. I could kind of accept it. 

My turn to climb. 

I chalked up my hands, slid in my horserinding gloves and tied in the rope. 

Here we go. 

Insecure in the ice with my long iceaxes I climbed up. Further and further. But still feeling slow. The first time since more then a year that I kicked my crampons in the hard wood of the structure. The speaker said some things about Dennis, about Dennis and me. I heard a lot of “Dennis” but had no idea what was going on...

The first time I touched the beautiful granite holds again. The first time on the worldcup again. In between all those girls who had been training and competing for months already. I felt small. 

Time out! 

Oh shit. Those six minutes went fast!

But it felt good enough for the semi’s at least. 

And it was. I was qualified 10th for the finals. 

Meanwhile I understood all the “Dennis”. 
Back on the speed wall Dennis was trying to qualify for the semi’s in speedclimbing. The brittle ice broke and he cut himself rather badly in his leg with is iceaxe. He looked all pale and had a good patch of blood on his axe, gloves and trousers. 

Ouch. 
But he was smiling so we all thought he was okay. 
Limping towards the structure again he climbed again. And fell. Everyone was shocked. Last years winner was out!

Within a couple hours he had to be in isolation for the leadclimbing. 

The bandage around his leg was bleeding through, making his trousers look even worse. But he wanted to try. 

He limped up to the structure, tied in and was hardly able to move his right leg. Not even able to figure of four he pulled his way up, and as his friend Malcom Kent said afterwards: “You make iceclimbing look ridiculous”. “I love you too Malc” he replied sticking his middle finger to his head. And yes it did look ridiculous, doing one arm pull-ups, having the right leg stretched out hanging into nothingness when moving up. He managed to clip some draws but didn’t get very far. 

Later on the day I managed to carefully climb up to a tenth place in the speed semi-finals. Not bad for a slug like me. 

Next day. Semi’s on the lead comp. 

I woke up, walked down to the restaurant. Closed. All was dark and no-one answered the bell that I rung to ask when breakfast would be served. F*. No breakfast. I waited, until I really had to be in isolation. Still no-one to serve breakfast. 

They forgot, they forgot I asked for an early breakfast! The banana was the only energy I got that morning...

Need-to-climb-faster. That was the idea. 
My accept-that-I’m-nervous-listen-to-music-stay-in-the-cold-instead-of-in-the-warm-isolation-method worked before so I used it again. Oh, shit, but how do I use this axes to swing with! They’re drytooling things, nothing more then gardening tools to clean the weeds, compared to real iceaxes! On the last moment I decided to sharpen them as much as possible, making the blades super thin. And then the Russian coach Alexander Tolokonin, the husband of Maria Tolokonina (who also competed in the finals) showed me the half-way grip. That was the trick! I got it, it is possible to swing those gardening tools! Now I just needed to climb faster. 

Suddenly the UIAA photographer came up to me with two warm croissants, he smiled. He read my frustrated Facebook-post that morning about the missing breakfast and brought me some food! Slowly I ate half a croissant, eyes closed, enjoying the extra energy that my body needed.

Time to climb.

Not struggling at all with the altitude (so all the running did work?) I tried to speed up, making long moves and efficiently I swung the tools in the wood. Compared to most of the girls I do have a swing as I do climb outdoor ice too, and this gave me a big advantage. 

After my climb some of the girls fell out quite early. And this made me more and more excited. One more and I’d be in the finals... “YES!” I screamed when Russian climber Nataljia fell! Oh, thats mean I thought, I was not allowed to be that happy when someone fell... But I was happy. I reached the finals!

The first thing Dennis said was not “well done” but “I need to see a doctor”. He didn’t look too good. His leg still bleeding a bit. And so he limped to the doctor. She saw the wound, and told him it wasn’t that good. Looking at the amount of fat tissue coming out it was all the way in, at least 5cm. She told him it will take at least three to four weeks to heal...if it doesn’t get infected. Meaning his iceclimbing season is over... (Read his story on his website here: http://www.dennisvanhoek.nl/?p=1864 )

After a midday sleep I was ready for the final run. 
For some reason I was suddenly managing nervousness and lowered the sick-nervous feeling to a more healthy level. 
I did my regular mixed climbing warm-up: warm up my shoulders slowly, stretch a bit, get painful barfeys (so I don’t get them when doing the actual climbing) and get some more dynamic moves done. 

Music on level ‘extra loud’ and ready to go. I was kind of looking forward to the climb! That was a weird feeling. For the first time on a competition I actually kind of liked it...

Tricky start... I was moving slow.... Getting a bit insecure I wasn’t able to move very fast. Even the wood that I had to swing my tools into felt harder then before... “Klimmen” Dennis shouted, “klimmen”. Climb, climb he shouted, as I ordered him. Anything else, like “don’t think about your feet” or “your axes are fine” would distract me too much. “Ten seconds!” he screamed at the end. Oh shi*. I jumped for the last move and fell off, my axe still stuck in the ice barrel where I jumped off.

 

Hey, that was fun!

And that brought me to a 7th place. Not bad :)

Pictures thanks to pro-photographer Philippe Mooser, check his website thefirst.ch 

IWC Saas Fee

As usual. Nervous. Already.
Sigh...

But thats apparently how it works with me and competitions. The only way to solve it is, as far as I know, become just much stronger then I'd need to be to compensate for the weakness that comes with the nerves.

We missed the first two competitions; the first which was in Korea (too far away and thus too expensive) and the one in Romania (too horrible, after the food poisoning, hotel, train and safety issues I'd never go there again)

This weekend Dennis and I will be at Saas Fee. The comp where Dennis did his awesome speed run. Best timing and performance ever :)
He's not feeling too good lately but we have been active in training. Hopefully it will be good enough for him to get the awesomeness again, but you know... Iceclimbing is always quite a gamble. One zip and you're out...

I won't be expecting much of the speed climbing for myself but hopefully my strength will be sufficient to reach the lead finals this year.

All the results can be found here: iceclimbingworldcup.org

And the whole comp will be live on Swiss tv here: iceclimbingworldcup.ch

Ouray to Saas Fee

You win some you loose some. For me it felt like loosing a little bit and failing incredibly.

"But for a Dutch climber you did really well" "You looked pretty strong there" "You'll do better next time" "The others are so strong too" "But if you don't reach the finals, please don't be too disappointed" "Did you see how she did that move there after you fell out?" "I'm so going to watch the women's finals, they look so strong" "cheer up, you did a good job"

No, I'm not happy, I'm not satisfied, I didn't do a good job and stop trying to cheer me up with all your nonsense.

I barely reached the semi finals and with more then 5 minutes left on the clock I slipped out of the ice barrel not even half-way up the route. I was not even pumped. Fuck.

Last year I had de possibility to dedicate most of my year to climbing and I could work part-time as freelancer for several companies. Saving every single penny this whole year to only spent it all on climbing. Plane tickets for the Alpine Mentor Programme, subscription to the gym, super healthy food, every penny I counted.
The goal was to finally perform on the Worldcup Iceclimbing and climb hard mixed and ice this Winter season.

In Ouray I was happy to have climbed quite some hard things in the ice-park and in The Hall of Justice. Several M/D10's onsight, D11+ os, M9's onsight and that all without getting severely pumped!
I knew I was in shape and I knew I could do much more then the easy graded routes in the Hall of Justice.

Ouray, probably the only town in the world with ice farmers

The whole week in Ouray I kept on waking up, nervous for the upcoming competition. On the final day that Saturday I actually felt pretty ok. Although I had the worst warm-up ever (long story with occupied ropes and not enough space for all competitors) but with the -27C I was feeling pretty fine.
Up at the log I got nervous, after I felt fine in the first bit. I couldn't get my axe out of the wood and couldn't figure the next move properly. Getting confused even more with the dangling chain around my shoulder I made a mistake: I thought it would be better not to kick my feet in the log as it was so hard to get my axes out, I reached for the next hold after the first "fixed iceaxe" my feet popped off and out... Fairly disappointed there.
Not just because I figured it wouldnt be enough for the first place, but more because I really wanted to climb that route.
Vince Anderson and the whole team had put SO much effort in making that route there! And yes, as Steve said afterwards, I would have been happy only if I'd beaten Jeff there.
He was right.
I'm a climber, preferably an outdoor climber. And outdoor stuff like rock and ice doesn't care if you're a man or a woman. I mean: the ice is not going to form any easier when it sees that you're a woman trying to climb up...

Me in the comp route

So second place it was. Ines got disqualified after the grabbed a part of the iceaxe that was marked red, red meant a 'no-go' boundary. We both got the same height but she reached that point just a little faster, gaining the first place in the women's.

The next day I surprisingly ended on third place on the Hari Berger Speedclimbing competition!
I'm a super slow climber, so a weird result, but satisfied with that. Although, I don't take the seedclimbing too serious.

Steven and Logan in their Speed Battle

After a good session with our team, discussing training goals and future destinations it was time to fly back, to Geneva.

Airport blues

That's where I met Dennis. He had a cold, was a bit stressed and all the excitement that I felt before slightly disappeared. He seemed busy with other things...
And it didn't get any better when I figured both our Diesel heaters were broken. Sleeping in a campervan without proper heating in -17 C is not funny.
Following my training plan I should go hardcore on a morning drytool session.

That morning session faded away when the gas/acceleration cable was too frozen. Causing the engine to make way too many rpm. It took us half a day to fix it, having just a couple hours left for a short session at the Therme. I flashed the long 7b+ graded traverse after Dennis onsighted it. We did some other easier things and had fun with Roeland and William who we accidentally met there.
They invited us in Chamonix (took us a while to get there with the frozen cable)

Frozen cable...

Always interesting to talk with Roeland about all he does. He really inspires me!
I figured William is quite an inspiring guy too :)
Roeland was so kind to have us in his livingroom that night. Better then a freezing cold campervan :)
The next morning the cable was totally frozen again. We were even worried doubting if we could reach Saas Fee in time.
The ANWB (Dutch version of what in German is called ADAC) should help out but so far (three days later) we still don't have a new cable, so we're stuck in Saas Fee...

Chamonix... (no photoshop!)

The next day, competition day one started at 06:20 in the morning with breakfast
The isolation closed at 07:45 and I was one of the first to climb.
Dennis was so sweet to stay in the isolation with me, comforting me and getting the attention on other things then nervousness.
I used an alternative method to warm up. Less climbing, bit of cardio and stuff.
Worked pretty well I found, saving my energy for the real job: climbing the route.
The climbing went o.k. I was just so slow and insecure, timing out again. I was hoping to get higher then this...
Lucky enough to reach the semi's with that result.
Meanwhile coach Tim van der Linden, pro Photographer Menno Boermans and NKBV Photographer Reinier Rijke watched the climb.
So nice to have a Dutch support team.

Screenshots from the qualifications

Dennis did fairly better in the next discipline that was planned for that day..
He ended up in 9th in the qualifications for the speed climbing.
Easily good enough for the finals later that day.
Later on he did even better and reached the semi's in the lead as well :)

Dennis climbing the qualifications

I was then up for the speed round. As I'm a very slow climber I'm just naturally not good in that discipline. Basically have the wrong genes I guess.
Though, did a goo job with climbing in just 13 seconds to the top of the wall. Good for a 12th place. Not the best, but my fastest climb ever. Urs, one of the speakers really entertained the public during the climb, telling that I'm there just for fun. And actually, now that I didn't take it all that serious it actually became fun to climb :)

Speedclimbing
Picture: Menno Boermans

Later that night something happened. Fairly extraordinary special and unique.
Dennis and the Russians were competing in the finals of the speed comp.
He looked fine even with his flu and bad sleep.
The test run went fine and the ice got worse in every climb.
Already in our women's run the ice wasn't too good, but now the fragile ice-fifi's seemed to rip through every time again.
His first run went fine, not the fastest yet though, but he could definitely still perfect it all.
He looked at the wall, 18 competitors in between him and the next run. Carefully looking on where to place his tools as effective as possible.
Theoretically he'd only need 6 moves to reach the timer on top of the wall.
The other climbers were sometimes faster, slower, some fell and ripped out even more ice.
Second try, out of three.
Dennis ran up, only made slight mistakes and reached the top in a flow. Then the time: 7.05 seconds.
The best time so far!
Still two runs to go for most climbers.We, still weren't sure and thought he 'might just reach the podium, or not'. We expected the Russians to get better then that.
But one after the other kept falling and failing to set a better time. Dennis had one more try but unfortunately made a small mistake, but still the fastest run counts.
So many climbers still to go!
The last climber up... A strong climber, a fast one... The last one to possibly crush Dennis time. He didn't crush it. He...
Oh my, he hardly believed it himself. He just WON the Worldcup Speedclimbing 2013 Saas Fee!
The first Dutch to win an iceclimbing worldcup, the first non-Russian for years and years. Dennis just broke the Russian Speedclimbing empire, Dennis, after seven years of worldcup climbing just did it.
I'm proud and honestly think he really deserved this. He'd been so close every time again, and now he finally proved he's the best, the fastest. That's just AWESOME!

↵ Use original player

Dennis van Hoek on his Gold winning run. Iceclimbing Worldcup Saas Fee 2013

By Marianne van der Steen

Vimeo

• SD

← Replay

X

i

Dennis just after he realised he won the speed comp

There wasn't much time for celebrations. The next morning, today I had to wake up early, again. Women's semi finals.
My warm-up similar to yesterday's but my sleep time that night was less... Dennis is still having a bad cold, we kept on waking up making the night seem to last forever.

In the isolation there is no cellphone reception, you're not allowed to have any contact with others then the judges and fellow competitors in the isolation. Everyone being there with the same goal: to reach the finals.
The route seemed do-able when we had the route preview. One pathetic girl kept on asking route details when back in the isolation zone. Working on my nerves there. I decided music and big headphones would do the job there :)
Every climber has ten minutes for the route. Making it seem to last forever before it was my time I climb. I was warm, ready and had nothing else to do but wait.
I got so nervous...
I started to feel sick, was over the point of having to pee of nervousness, I was heading to the point of being sick of nervousness.
I tried to get my mind off the competition climbing, thinking really hard of positive experiences in outdoor routes. Eliminating any thought of failure, any thought of having to perform, any thought of consequences of my climbing for myself.
I changed my music, watched pictures, thought of other things then climbing, tried to get into Yoga mode and chill, breathe. And then suddenly I just had to throw up. Slowly I reached the toilet. Great, nice preparation I thought. Later sitting next to the venue, almost my time to climb, it came up again....
When my turn came I had a fairly solid start, remembering my mistakes from the Qualifiers I moved fast and solid, not letting myself get time to rest. Ten minutes, I could easily climb hard for ten minutes.
Some of the moves felt tricky but ok, even with my heart banging in my stomach.

In the first moves after the ice-start.
Picture: Menno Boermans

I stalled out on a move to a barrel of ice. Pre-drilled holes, lock off and move was the plan. The hole I went for actually wasn't that good, and I found with a figure of four would I'd waste my time. I went in the hole again, a bit deeper and suddenly my axe completely slipped out! Having locked off completely I had no back-up with my other axe on the previous hold. Fuuuck, I screamed, off I was... Game over. With more then five minutes of climbing time left I failed, utterly failed to reach the finals. Confused, defeated I just wanted to leave.
All this fuckin work, I know I'm way better then last year but with a 15th place in the end ranking I had no way to prove my progression on paper.
I just so much want to be a climber, but it seems I'm not...

Dennis did fairly better later on the day. The comp started earlier then planned as there was a time conflict, there was not enough time in between the men's semi's and the woman's finals.
His flu didn't really help him. Totally out of breath he fell out. Reaching a good high point and becoming 13th. No finals, but he was satisfied with his result after all. Many others got disqualified after getting their axes in over the red lines in the wood. And oh yes, Nomics rule when you have to swing :) Some climbers had so much trouble getting their axes in the wood because of the awkward axe design. But all climbers with Nomics seemed just fine.

Right now the men are climbing the finals. With the absence of Markus Bendler, who decided it was time to quit. Probably tired of the immense amount of Russians competing.
Felicitas Feller didn't compete either, she's really ill now after she came back from the Worldcup in Korea...

The Russians on the Worldcup is getting quite an issue. Sometimes it seems more like an Russian championship instead of a worldcup. Making it less attractive for other countries to join the comps...
I'll come back on that later.

Hee Yong Park, second place in between 7 Russians...

Now time for the price giving, with the Dutch national anthem, Wilhemus van Nassouwe...

Dennis and the Russians :)
Note the Nomic iceaxe on the medal

Tomorrow we'll have to wait for the cable and then we drive passed my dream route, passed all the ice up to the next worldcup in Rabenstein.
I wish I could skip that one and just climb for myself, outdoors, without all the stress and nerves, just me, the ice, the rock, that doesn't care who you are and will be the same for all.
Dream on...

The "Dutch Championships" icewall made by Thomas Knoope

Meanwhile in the Netherlands we have a 'natural' icewall. The organisers (not the Dutch Mountain Federation NKBV itself) decided to call it an "NK" (Dutch Championship). From the 'Knoope Open Ice' into Dutch Championships, thats quite a significant change.
I think they should consider a new name if they'd like to take the sport serious.
I mean, look at the wall, it's not even remotely representative to the actual international level of iceclimbing competitions and next to that, the best Dutch athletes are on the Worldcup or somewhere in the Alps right now, so a the new 'Dutch Champions' won't actually be the best Dutch iceclimbers...
It's not that I'm against the idea of having an event on an ice wall in the Netherlands, it's just that I don't find the name and attention fitting the event.
We have a Worldcup winner here, and a tiny Dutch icewall gets more media attention?!

Dennis is famous in Saas Fee :)

Worldcup 2013 and 2014 Olympics

...and there it is. The 2013 Worldcup schedule.

The UIAA announced the schedule for 2013 with some new things and some old things.

Old: Worldcup in Busteni (why?) I'm surprised. If you read my post about the last Worldcup there, you can understand why I'm 'slightly' surprised. (See here, here and here)

New: Worldcup in Rabenstein (Italy). The enthusiasts of the local icewall there have done a good job last years organising a fun and proper competition and for that they're rewarded with a Worldcup! Congrats!

And this year there will be a championships again. They chose Kirov (Russia) as the location. So I guess I'll have to travel there this year (better start collecting money now...)

I'm not going to join all the Worldcups in the schedule this year and climb more outdoors. The 'ultimate' climb for me is a mixed/ice route on a natural wall. The Worldcup is fun (and sometimes not), but pureness is where my heart is.

The Schedule:

January 5-6 2013, UIAA Ice Climbing Worldcup Cheongsong, South Korea

January 12 2013, UIAA Ice Climbing Youth World Championship, Saas Grund, Switzerland

January 18-19 2013, UIAA Ice Climbing Worldcup, Saas Fee, Switzerland

January 26-27 2013, UIAA Ice Climbing Worldcup, Rabenstein, Italy

February 7-9 2013, UIAA Ice Climbing Worldcup, Busteni, Romania

March 8-10 2013, UIAA Ice Climbing Worldcup and Championships, Kirov, Russia


I often have bad comments about the Russian part of the iceclimbing Worldcup.
There are too many Russians taking part and the rules seem to be bend to allow them all, the routesetters in Busteni did a bad job, the Russian judge made some really bad mistakes, it's hard to communicate with most as their foreign (non-Russian) language is limited and one Russian seemed to have a crush on me (and that was just a bit too much).
But theres one Russian who is working incredibly hard (together with others I suppose) to get iceclimbing to a higher level.
He managed to get iceclimbing to the Olympics!
For the first time ever iceclimbing will be shown as sports on the Olympic games.
Not as official Olympic sports yet, but as every sports starts like this on the Olympics, it's a good starts to something higher :)
Sochi, Russia 2014 will be the place.
Very, very, very good job Pavel Shabalin!

Meanwhile it's way too warm here to think of climbing ice.

It's sunny, warm and I'm busy with my lost luggage, the trip to Iceland, my work and yesterday evening we joined with thousands of others the Wednesday night skate. 
It all was quite slow but fun!
Totally motivated to go out skating again :)

Wednesdaynightskate with Rens, Koen, Suus and Arvid :)
Photo taken by a motorbike policeman with brown teeth.

Worldcup Saas-Fee pt. 2

Disappointed with the result (13th) which should be 12th, if you'd strictly follow the rules (a Russian climber should have been disqualified) I had quite an unfortunate climb: had my axe stuck in a hold, waisted quite some time there and wasn't able to fix a hold straight away, waisting more time...

Dennis did well until he popped off (tired, bad hold, bad luck)

Hopefully better next time :(

Worldcup Saas-Fee

Whoe :) Again anaother day of worldcup climbing.
Just climbed, was really slow, nervous and pretty insecure but just reached the semi's.
Dennis was quite impressive and managed almost to top the route.
Tonight speedclimbing and tomorrow semi's and hopefully finals as well...

Busteni adventures 3

Day three in Romania.

And still no climbing.

I gradually start to get trouble with my addiction (climbing) as I haven't climbed for 5 days now...

Hereby I intend to feed my addiction on another way: by being online all day on the slug-slow Romanian internet. I can tell you: it doesn't work...

This evening will be the official opening (originally planned on...yesterday) and then finally I'll climb, on Saturday.

I'm wondering how good/bad it is to take such long rest from climbing.

In case the internet completely breaks down here, the program (no idea if it's the right program) can be found here. And in case I'm climbing during an internet-wave, here you can find the live-stream.

And, because it's always good to look back on fun activities, here some video's from Lukasz for Planet Fear. (Still wondering why I'm not 'starring in the video, but hey, whatever :)

Wild bear detection counter for today: still no bears spotted...

6th on the Worldcup

Finally, after a year of recovering, climbing and dedication to the sports, I did it...I climbed the finals of the worldcup iceclimbing!

And I wasn't even too bad. Out of 8 who reached the finals I became 6th! With a very, very close distance to the 5th, 4th and 3th place :)

Meaning: I'm improving!

Now, we're already far away from Saas Fee again, back in Kandersteg. With enough ice this time to climb some real ice routes.

I find it difficult, sometimes scary, tiring, cold but...fun! And it's logical, we're on an iceclimbing trip so we should climb ice :)

This weekend we'll climb a competition again, Rabenstein it will be. Not a worldcup but a high-class competition with many worldcup climbers.

And then it will be Romania we'll head for. For the third worldcup of the season.

Together with Dutch climber Ferdinand Schulte we'll try to do well in Busteni.

Picture from 'the First'

Saas Fee Worldcup Finals!

Yes, I did it!

For the first time I'm in the finals of the worldcup iceclimbing.

Just climbed the semi-finals and managed to climb further then most of the climbers.

So, around 16:15h you can watch me live...

Watch live streaming video from iceclimbing at livestream.com

Saas Fee Worldcup

Day one of the Worldcup in Saas Fee.

Only the speedclimbing to go for today.

The last days we tried to do some iceclimbing, but the weather here is pretty bad for iceclimbers: too warm... Though we found some in the youth-competition area in Saas Grund, close to Saas Fee.

The lead went okay. The route was easy, but I was a bit too slow on the top, the iceblock just before the last two moves. So I just didn't top, too bad! Though, hopefully good enough for tomorrow's semi-finals.

The men (Ferdinand and Dennis for the Netherlands) will climb this midday after 13:00h.

It's all live on the worldcup website here: http://www.livestream.com/iceclimbing/

Weather issues

Some people just love sun, warm weather and a stroll around the village.

I just can't wait to climb again!

We have a rest day today. Which means being bored all day: baking a pie with Cheongsong-apples, reading Donald Duck, knitting Dennis' sweater, sleeping a bit, eating the pie, washing clothes, taking a shower, drying the clothes, eating more pie, reading a bit, knitting again, sleeping again, a little walk and...watch how all the ice melts away.

It's so warm here that we haven't had a chance to get our axes in the ice. Just drytooling these two days. Not that it's bad to do so, we got pretty tired of our training, but, we're in the Alps, so we want ice.

Next Friday will be the Saas Fee Worldcup competition, so soon we'll drive to Saas Fee and get ready for some hard-good-fun climbing again.

If you're online, you can follow the whole comp live on the worldcup website here: WEBCAM

Saas Fee 3

After the comp we went for a little iceclimb. Easy but fun. Weird to climb with people I've never climbed with. It all was a bit messy, but I really loved swinging my axes in some ice again.
Dennis and me went right. Corné, Tim and Edwin went left. Two little lengths and we ended in the middle together again.
Afterwards we enjoyed pancakes at Menno's place in Grächen. We watched the women's finals online and went back to Saas Fee just before the men's finals started.
And then of course we had the crazy party with people bouldering in the roof, t-shirts getting ripped off and loads of beer.
We went to the area this midday again and the only smell we smelled was beer, no climbing atmosphere at all longer. Time to leave.
We'll head for Rabenstein soon.

Saas Fee 2

Day two in Saas Fee, luckily back in the camper van, with heating and electricity now. It's just comfy and cheap. And money is not really the thing growing on trees in winter-time...
So, woke up early again, this time the isolation even closed at 7:45 (Swiss time). I took some breakfast and then the waiting, warming-up and getting nervous started. This time I was nervous, much worse then in the qualifications.
I knew I could do something good if my head was ok and if I would feel ok. Maybe even finals.
I started as number 8. Some already climbed and I really needed some music and close my eyes to focus.
The Swiss speaker announced me in Dutch and I started solid in the ice of the route. I like to hack in the ice, maybe more then most of the women. Some climb with really light axes which just bounce back when you try to get them good in the ice. Toothpicks we call them. Most actually never climb real ice. And I'm wondering why...it's called iceclimbing-worldcup....
But then the boxes of ice started and the pump got more. I wasn't very focused and was nervous of being out of time. Maybe I climbed too fast, didn't take the time to get the pump out of my arms. And there I was, figure of four failed, I just couldn't hold on my axes anymore! Finally getting to the real iceclimbing moves and then I was pumped... I knew I was out, I felt, that when you can deal with the pump you can get much longer...
Hopefully not last in the semi-finals :)
Afterwards I checked the results and it turned I became 12th. Not bad for a second Worldcup!
It was live on the internet, even my parents could watch me climb. I hope they will keep doing that, also in the next comps.